Cages
by hide-N-seeker
Summary: I have been studying how I may compare the prison where I live unto the worldShakespeare. Harry is a prisoner for the majority of his life. Major AU, undetermined slash pairing.


Hello everyone, this was just something sucking my attention away from my upcoming finals so I decided to feed the void. I hope to hear back from everyone regarding their thoughts and some honest reviews! This will be slash story, though I am not certain of the pairing yet. It will be far into the future of this story. I will be using several cliché plot lines that have popped up in this fandom because, I admit, they amuse me! If this offends anyone, stop reading. Thanks! And…I do not own Harry Potter or his world, but since this is AU, everything that you do not recognize is mine.

Prologue

Harry had spent the majority of his life in a cage, the very cage that he huddled in right now. It was small, cramped, dirty, and reeked of sweat, blood and piss. The beasts straining at their harnesses only increased the stench, but by this time, Harry was so accustomed to the smell that he did not even notice.

The heat of the sun had forced him to the center of his prison in an attempt to avoid the bars, which were too hot to touch without resulting in some severe blisters. He could already feel the beginning of a nasty burn scorching his shoulders and cheeks. The raised welts on his legs and chest were the only things keeping him from changing position to escape the sun's harsh rays.

Despite the heat, Harry could not help but find the desert land surrounding him to be quite beautiful. Sand and dust gave way to beautiful natural rock monuments and sparse but gorgeous spiny trees and shrubs. Flowers both taller and wider than he, turned fragrant petals up in benediction to the very thing that threatened to destroy it. The blooms were festively bright and grew in many different colors. Everything about this place was bright and harsh.

Earlier, Harry had snagged a large vibrant red blossom through the bars of his cage. The large flower was hidden in his lap by his bent knees. He doubted that his keepers would care overly much about his acquisition, but it seemed safer to hide it than chance being wrong.

He glanced up from under his lashes at his current guard. The wrinkled gray hide was slightly browner around the ridges of his eyes. Harry remembered this guard as being more lenient than some of the others. More lenient meant that he usually waited for a reason to lash out at the captives. He was also the most likely to give the parched creatures he tended a small sip of water.

Harry made himself as small as possible and tried to make him self look pathetic, which admittedly, was not difficult. Not making a single sound, Harry caught his guard's attention with a discreet flutter of his hand. A grunt of acknowledgement accompanied the assessing red eyes. Harry made sure not to make eye contact and flinched when his unwilling companion grunted again. Harry understood this as a distinct "No" and thanked his ancestors (not that he knew any of them) for the reprieve when no whip landed.

A chirpy snigger from the cage traveling behind his own made Harry glare at the feathered monstrosity that was preening its ratty feathers. The pale silver and black of its plumage was rusty and gray from the dust and dirt thrown up by the churning hooves and wheels of their transport. A squawk of indignation fell from its pointy beak as a rut in the path had it pulling a clump of its own feathers out.

Harry allowed his lips to quirk up slightly in amusement before turning back to the slowly changing landscape. This was his first time this far east. He wasn't sure why they had abandoned the usual circuit they traveled in the west; north in the summer, south in the winter. Nor was he likely to find out. Most questions were answered with a blunt object being hurled at someone's head. And they only diverted from their path to entertain particularly well paying customers or to sell or trade one of the current attractions.

Harry was fairly safe since his owners seemed to be under the impression that he was a one-of-a-kind freak of nature; a mostly bald, gangly limbed, oddity. Harry had vague dreams of others like himself, elegant figures, with the same five fingers on each hand and smooth skinned bodies. He remembered voices of these imaginary beings better than he did faces. He could recall soft-spoken words, some laughter, and most of all, screaming…shouts and yells...the sound of pain…green light.

Harry knew the sound of pain, though he himself was silent. He had not spoken a word in many, many years. Not since that first beating he received for making too much noise. He remembered that he was calling out for someone, someone like him. He quickly learned that **_any_** noise was too much noise for the strange wrinkled creatures that took him. Harry remembered having an odd desire to call them trolls since his capture, and he did so, though it as only in head.

The company of trolls and their travels from city to town to village was all Harry knew of life. Everything that came before that was nothing but a vague dream he couldn't quite grasp. They moved, they stopped, Harry was gawked and pointed at, and then they moved again. Harry could admit that he gawked and stared too, at least at first. The free peoples that they met were other trolls, a few giants, and a rare goblin or two. The only other species that Harry had ever seen were his fellow beasts, all stretched out in the caravan of exotic creatures set up to display to those who cared to pay the fee.

He was well aware of the pity and disgust he garnered wherever they stopped. But no matter how repulsive he was, he was also one of the main attractions. Harry had grown ashamed of his ugliness and kept to himself as much as possible when entertaining the crowds. Though the natives did not seem to be too put out by his lack of interaction. He was like nothing the inhabitants of the western wastes had ever seen before and he seemed to draw and fascinate them with his abnormal appearance.

Over time, Harry had picked up enough of the language of his guards to follow simple directions and recognize his own description. They called him Kai, which Harry knew to mean "one" or "alone". He was well aware that his true name was Harry but he wasn't about to argue with a troop of trolls. He figured it was chosen to reiterate his status as a novelty. No, they would not sell him. He was their biggest draw.

Harry rubbed at the black cuffs tight about his wrists and scratched awkwardly at the matching black choker. All of the magical creatures in the caravan had them in various colors; each used to designate which creatures had magic and how dangerous they were. They also kept the individuals magic bound tightly within their bodies. The Thunderbird and the Manticor near his own cage bore the red cuffs and the horned horse with the split tail had a glowing blue band around its spiraled horn and its neck. As far as he knew, he was the only one to wear black since he was brought to his prison home.

The thunderbird at his back trilled a soft warning at him as the guards changed and Harry quickly made his posture as timid and subservient as he could, given the surroundings. The grunts, snorts and deep bass rumbles of the two trolls lasted for several minutes before they switched stations. They usually only grunted in greeting to one another and moved on. Perhaps they were nearing their destination…

The outer edges of the wastes bordered two kingdoms Harry had heard named several times in his life. To the north lay a quiet agricultural land the trolls called Miikillge and the south was named Tival, though a goblin at their last stop insisted it was named Chiival, which Harry found much more pleasant. Harry was aware that the majority of the inhabitants of the east were goblins rather than trolls. And as they had traveled further and further from their usual route, Harry had been introduced to gnomes, though they tended to scatter and hide as soon as they caught sight of the lumbering mountain trolls.

Just as he called the beasts that caged him "trolls," and kept his true name "Harry," he dubbed the country on the eastern horizon "Chiival," no matter what the others chose to call it. Harry knew that the people he was forced to travel with did not get along with the people from the east, though he did not know why. They had avoided moving too far east since Harry could recall. Communication over the desert was sparse and generally exaggerated, but it was always bad news. And anything that worried his captors, terrified Harry.

Harry nervously wondered how close to that imaginary border the caravan was going to get. He did not know it then, but Harry had every reason to worry. By dawn, his cage would be center stage in the main market of Chiival's largest seaport city. And the guards he had known his whole life will have vanished…


End file.
